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Thursday, January 16, 2014

Cameroon’s institute for the blind goes for 3 years without portable water !

By
Christopher Ambe

RIB Director, Ekane E.Ebweh

The
Rehabilitation Institute for the Blind (RIB)
in Bulu, Buea has gone for three years without portable water, forcing its
blind trainees to trek hundreds of meters to fetch water from a nearby stream(called
Ndongo), The Recorder has learnt.

Although
a state –owned institution, RIB Bulu whose mission is to equip the blind aged
between 12 and 35 with marketable skills, is poorly equipped and funded.

As
at January 15, 2014, when your reporter visited the institute it had no service
vehicle and the campus was untidy.

These
are just some of the challenges that newly installed Director of RIB Mr. Ekane
Edmund Ebweh will have to overcome.

Commissioned
into office last January 13 by the Southwest Regional Delegate for Social Affairs
Asongtia Foreke Valentine, the new Director of RIB was tasked to work extra hard
to standardize the institute, which was
created in 1967.

After
creation the institute first operated in Bavenga in Muyuka subdivision, before
it was moved to the present site Bulu, in 1980. RIB has trained many blind Cameroonians.

With
an in-take capacity of about 50, RIB currently has only 14 trainees.

The
new director, who took over from his predecessor Fomenky Nicodemus, has
launched an appeal to the public for parents to send their blind children to
RIB Bulu for skills training.

Speaking
to The Recorder, Mr.Ekane Ebweh noted that disability is not inability. He
added that the Cameroon government is determined to assist in several ways the
physically challenged.

Mr.Ekane
has come back to RIB as director for the second time. He had earlier been RIB
director from 2006 to 2009. His predecessor Mr. Fomenky managed the institute
from 2009 to 2013, when he retired.